about bae

⚡️ photo dump 📸

My Blogging Tools and Essentials

September 3, 2015/

Of all people who can/should write this, I feel that I have the least right, but after watching too many episodes, I eventually got tired of Orange is the New Black and decided to type for a change. I know I’ve posted too many mini-blogs earlier this morning, but I feel like doing one more for the day.

I browsed through my blog post ideas and looked for one that didn’t require much effort and felt like I was just telling a story to a friend while typing it down, and since I coincidentally don’t have much blogging tools and essentials, I opted for this one.

To go straight to the point, I only use two apps for my headboard photos, and as for blogging, I don’t require much.

I mainly use VSCOcam app to edit my photos and PicMonkey to put my header. I only use a uni-colored rectangle for the backdrop and choose the color that matches the photo and then put the title itself – the font depends on the mood I want to sport, but I usually just use black or white for it. To be more specific, here are the fonts I often use for my headers:

Going back to editing apps I use, I used to be hooked on Snapseed but after not using it for quite some time, it felt that editing photos on Snapseed and then on VSCOcam was too much work, so I stuck with VSCOcam, especially after learning how to adjust my colors, contrast, exposure, and whatnot. It was to good to ditch.

Here are examples of photos in their original image, and after being edited with VSCOcam.

If you can notice, I don’t over-filter my photos (until just recently). I edit it enough to make it look better, but I don’t exaggerate on the temperature, unless I really don’t like the colors of the original photo, like the one below:

Some time ago, I’ve pondered whether I should just make the big switch and finally learn how my way around WordPress, which I heard are more frequently used by bloggers for its ease of use. Sadly for me, when I tried navigating my way through it, I just found the platform too complicated and no matter how much I made changes on my blog, it wouldn’t save it. I didn’t want to complicate things so I looked for other blogging platforms. I then found Weebly, which I really loved. You just have to literally drag everything where you want them, it was like working on an empty paper and drawing whatever you wanted. It was too good to be true. Convinced that it was the one, I chose among my blog posts from Tumblr and imported my favorites to my Weebly account. After a while, it felt silly to be managing two blogs. I mean, what’s the use if the contents would exactly be the same? It wasn’t worth the fuss, and I realized that I didn’t have to keep looking for what pleased my eyes, but just work with what I already have and tweak it a bit – or a lot, whichever is more applicable. So that’s what I did. After focusing too much of my time on my Tumblr account, I realized that I was slowly fading away from importing posts to my Weebly account. It’s still there, but it’s definitely inactive now.

Despite having difficulties finding the right theme for my Tumblr blog, I chose to stick to it, basically because it’s where I started and this is where I met a lot of people that inspired me to blog. They may not be as active anymore, or might have switched to other platforms, but I will always consider Tumblr home, especially because people here love pizza and are as awkward as me. Haha! Plus, who doesn’t like seeing sunsets and donuts on her feed to brighten up her day?

Being a tumblr blogger, obviously I don’t have any hosting website, I try not to purchase any theme as much as I want to for the to-die-for designs. Simply put, my blog is as simple as I am.. and as free. LOL.